This invention relates to a plate assembly intended to protect a wearer's chest and abdomen from ballistic impacts as well as blast and shock waves.
Plate assemblies comprising a plurality of overlapping rigid plates are used, for example, in clearing land mines and other munitions. It is often necessary to adopt a crouching or bending stance in such operations and this requires an assembly in which adjacent plates are both articulated and have a variable amount of overlap, to allow the wearer's abdomen to curl inwardly. A further requirement of such a plate assembly is that the plates themselves should not injure the wearer when subjected to a blast and/or shock wave. The requirements for articulation and decoupling from a blast wave are not readily compatible and the invention seeks to provide a plate which meets both requirements.